The River Midnight (37 page)

On Tishah-b’Av bittersweet nightshade was blooming around the edge of the cemetery, tiny purple stars shining above the tombstones. It was the ninth day of the Hebrew month, the lunar month, of Av, a day of mourning and fasting in memory of the first Temple, destroyed in 586
B
.
C
.
E
., and the second destroyed in 70
C
.
E
. It was the day that the Talmud was burned in Paris in 1242. The day the Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492.

The evening meal before the fast was meager. They ate soup, some dry bread, an egg with ashes on it. The synagogue was dim, lit by only a few candles. The Torah was draped in black. The congregation recited dirges, sitting on the floor in their torn garments as if in mourning. The Scroll of Lamentations was chanted and the Book of Job studied for the meaning of pain. In the courtyard, children threw seed burrs at one another.

The doctor from Plotsk had come and gone, offering little hope. Alta-Fruma begged Misha to take a look at Emma, even though the midwife was so far along, even though it was Tishah-b’Av. Hayim waited outside under the willow trees, standing vigil as he had the day that Misha had miscarried.

When the door opened, he could see Misha bending over Emma. I have to tell Misha that she shouldn’t worry, he thought. As long as I’m around she’ll have wood for her fire and her child will be warm. Misha looked tired, but his eyes followed Alta-Fruma, her shawl over her head, as she emerged.

“Misha says it’s going to be soon,” Alta-Fruma said. “I’m going to the shul to pray, although the Holy One knows that I have no merit. Is Heaven going to listen to an old
aguna
with no learning and no virtue?”

He held her tight. “Everything has merit to the Master of the Universe,” he said. “Even a leaf. Even a frog. It’s all from
Ein Sof.
” The Endless One. “So you, Fruma, have nothing to hide. Not a thing. Merit? You without merit?” He shook his head in wonder. “It’s impossible.
Don’t you hear how I’m talking? If a poor watercarrier can speak so easily for your sake, then what about the Holy One above? Let me tell you. I heard about a village where there was a drought. And it was only the prayer of the town drunk who brought rain, because his prayer was the most sincere. Can you believe it? But it’s true. Not even the wisest scholars could do what the town drunk did.”

“I have to go,” she whispered, tearing herself from his arms. He watched her walk, then run, into the darkness.

I
T IS WRITTEN
that the Messiah will be born on Tishah-b’Av. In the afternoon of the fast day, while the women swept out their houses in honor of his coming, Emma was sitting up and sipping a little soup.

A
FEW DAYS
later, Alta-Fruma and Hayim sat on the river bank watching the light of the full moon play on the water. He kissed each of her fingers, with their sweet milky scent like the breath of cows.

In the Talmud it says of the full moon of Av, “There are no days as festive to Israel as those of Yom Kippur and the fifteenth of Av. The daughters of Israel used to dress in white and go out to the fields to dance and young men would follow after them.”

In the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, Hayim joined the parade of villagers who walked in solemn procession to the River Północna. They crowded onto the bridge. They lined the shore. The “Young Rabbi,” Berekh, stood in the middle of the bridge, his red beard curling skyward like the shofar, the ram’s horn, as he recited slowly in a loud, firm voice,
“Cast away from yourselves all your transgressions and create within yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.” Tashlikh:
cast off. And so they emptied their pockets of crumbs and dust, throwing their sins into the river. Once upon a time, their ancestors sent the goat Azzazel into the desert, carrying the people’s iniquities on his poor head. Now, running excitedly along the banks of the Północna, their children tore up small pieces of bread, flinging them onto the water with glee, asking for more as the ducks paddled over to their sins and ate them up.

The Rabbi raised his arms. The congregation began to sing,
“My Lord, my Lord …”
Hayim was watching the trees. They shook down their yellow leaves onto the river in a singing rustle, a windy rush of unclothing their adornment, their bare forms, crooked or straight, revealed. The leaves floated down river, lightly floating, a river of gold, the golden calf melting into the earth’s veins. The
Tashlikh
of trees, Hayim thought. The trees were alight, and Hayim smiled as he saw the Holy Presence. “Adonai
is ever-present
,” he sang, joining the rest,
“all-merciful, gracious, compassionate, patient, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, treasuring up love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and pardoning the penitent.”
The acrid smell of Asher’s strong tobacco wafted past Hayim, though of course there would be no one smoking on this holy day.

Trees burn red in the lowering sun of Kol Nidrei eve. From his seat in the back corner of the synagogue, Hayim looks up in a half-smile as if he can see through the window of the gallery high above to Alta-Fruma in her white dress among the women. In the dusk the ceiling of Ari the Eggs is a blur of colors melding into darkness. Candelabra, hung on triple chains, burn among the tallow candles, dipped and formed by the women of Blaszka. The sanctuary is bright with flames. The candles dance around the ark, on the reader’s platform, along ledges on the walls above the benches.

Hayim stands in the back row with the beggar, the picklemaker, the dung sweeper. Behind him, leaning against the wall are strangers who have come to pray on this holiest of days. Visitors from outlying Polish villages where there are no synagogues. A peddler—Yarush from Plotsk. Others whose names Hayim doesn’t know. No one will ask them why they are here. It is their right. Shoulder to shoulder, the men wait for Kol Nidrei.

I
N THE
coming year, Hayim will sketch a self-portrait, using a mirror that Alta-Fruma will hold for him. She will bring back colored pencils from Warsaw, and Hayim will draw the red pig, with his bands of earthen brown, galloping under the sky toward the silver rocks and the
narrowed river where the ruins of the mill lie. At the bottom of the portrait he will write, “Hazzer escapes
Mitzrayim
,” the narrow place.

Eventually a boar will be sighted snuffling mushrooms among the beech trees and pines of the forest, and in time there will be an unusual number of piglets bearing his wild coloring, born behind the cottages along the river.

Yarush was driving his cart toward Blaszka, snow melting on his fur coat, a half-eaten hunk of salami in his hand. He took another bite. “May all his teeth fall out except for one, and that one should rot until the pain makes him take a hammer to his head,” he muttered to himself. It was his mother’s worst curse. He was invoking it on Andrei Gulbas, owner of the tavern on Whorehouse Row in Plotsk and leader of a gang of thieves that included his seven sons as well as Yarush. “ ‘Get out,’ Andrei says to me. Me, who’s been as good as his own brother. He said so many times himself. I just got a little mad. All right, I hit Matthias, but I never drew a knife.” Already he’d forgotten the pallor of Andrei’s youngest son as his head hit the cobblestones. Yarush had fallen to his knees and bent over the boy, a giant weeping, “I killed him, I killed him,” until Andrei’s sons pulled him away.

They’d brought Matthias into the house, laid him on the bed, and covered him first with a sheepskin, then with straw. The boy was so warm he’d turned bright red, as if he had a fever. “Andrei’s boy,”
Yarush had moaned. “Your papa took me off the docks and brought me to his own mother.”

Look, he’s still breathing, they said, but Yarush wouldn’t be consoled.

O
N A
Friday night when Yarush was seven years old, in the basement of Avraham’s brothel there were only two prostitutes, the pimp and Yarush, who was dazed and breathing painfully. His mother, the older of the two prostitutes, was slumped against the wall where Dovidel the pimp had thrown her. “I’m begging you. Leave the new girl alone,” his mother cried. “Riva doesn’t know anything yet.”

“And she’s going to learn.” Dovidel swung the buckle end of his belt. “The slut holds back a kopeck from me?”

“It wasn’t for me,” Riva said, sidling toward the door. “Just my brothers.”

“Please, Dovidel. Don’t,” Yarush’s mother said. The pimp turned and snapped the belt against her legs.

Yarush rushed at him. “You don’t hit my mother,” he yelled. He yelled loud so Dovidel wouldn’t see that he was scared. But Dovidel just snickered and slapped his face, right where his nose was broken. Yarush screamed, covering his face with his hands.

“Get out. Or you’ll have to run to the other side of the moon to stay alive,” Dovidel said.

“Go, son,” his mother said. “Please.” On the rickety table, the Sabbath candles flickered.

Yarush slept on the docks. The next morning, while Dovidel the pimp went to the gang’s synagogue to pray for a good week, Yarush was sneaking his hand into a barrel to steal a beet for his breakfast. He hardly had a bite out of it when an old man caught hold of his wrist and twisted it. “Get away from here,” he shouted. The boy stumbled against a stone wall, head aching as he got up, tripped over a beggar, hit his head again, fainted, came awake to find his jacket stolen but it didn’t matter, he was so hungry he didn’t feel the cold. He found some moldy potato skins but he ate too fast and threw up. Then he was so thirsty, he begged the sailors for a drink, though it burned at first. “I’m not afraid,” he said. “I’ve had my nose broken before. And my arm, too.” The sailors laughed, saying, This little Yarush is a man, practically
a Cossack. When Yarush woke up, he was lying on a pile of rope, his head hurting more than his nose and his throat all sticky. It was hours before he was hungry again, but then he began to dream about food even though his eyes were open.

When Andrei found him, Yarush was digging a fish head out of the garbage.

“This will make you sick,” Andrei said, taking it from him.

“Give it back. It’s mine. You can’t have it,” Yarush said, kicking and hitting with his fists though Andrei was so much bigger. Sweat poured into Yarush’s eyes. He had to get it back. He had to. It wasn’t just a fish head anymore. It was a whole fish. A fish with potatoes. And sour cabbage. And …

“Come with me. Mama will feed you something better,” Andrei said.

“No. Leave me alone,” Yarush said as Andrei picked him up. He wailed against Andrei’s shoulder, then struggled to get away, but Andrei only laughed, saying, “So you’re a tough one,” as he carried him off.

In Andrei’s house, Yarush had five helpings of onions and potatoes lathered in cream, not rusted and rotting like he got at the brothel, but beautiful white potatoes. He fell asleep, the fork still in his fist and someone carried him to Andrei’s straw bed.

His mother’s left shoulder healed higher than the right and Dovidel the pimp called her the Hunchback after that. Sometimes she laughed. “You see me, son?” she would ask Yarush. “I was once beautiful. The daughter of Zelig the grain merchant. You can say that your grandfather was a rich man in Blaszka, but don’t say his name. I’m dead to him, and how can a dead person have a father?” Then she would laugh. It was worse than when Dovidel hit her.

On Passover, his mother would tell him to be a good boy and not eat any bread. Yarush would nod and pat her hand before going off to Andrei’s family. There he would eat
sweicone
, holy food, pork and pastry blessed by the priest for Easter. Andrei’s father sometimes grumbled about feeding Jews at Easter when it was more appropriate to beat them up. But Andrei’s mother, crunching on the piece of
matzah
Yarush had brought her, would say, “Never you mind, he’s our Jew.”

When he was thirteen, Yarush went to prison for a while and the guards called him the Bear, because of his fur coat. One night, for fun,
the guards put a rope around his neck and poked him with bayonets and shouted, “Dance for us.” And Yarush did, clumsily, while they laughed and threw him some meat, which he ate.

T
HE ROAD
from Plotsk followed the Vistula River until it joined its small tributary, the Północna. There the road divided. Straight ahead, it continued on to Warsaw, and to the left it twisted toward Blaszka. It was quiet on the road. Too quiet. There was just the sound of the wheels grating and it got on Yarush’s nerves. There was always someone to have a drink with on Whorehouse Row. A tip about a job. A game of dice. And if you wanted to be left to yourself, all right, you sat at your table and drank alone. The noise around you let you know you were alive. In his cart he had a load of stolen goods to sell to the farms upriver, but the old wheezing nag was pulling the cart like she was taking a Sabbath stroll. Didn’t she feel the whip? Yarush flicked it again and again until, bleeding, she began to trot.

At the bend in the road, he saw someone sitting on a log, looking at a notebook. Hatless. Red hair sticking up. Torn jacket. Poor and young. But he had a traveling bag with rope handles. Might be something in it. The Traveler waved at Yarush. “Can I get a ride?” he called.

“If you got money,” Yarush said. The Traveler looked him up and down like Yarush was the one begging a ride and the young man a somebody. I know the type, Yarush thought. A proper Jew, thinks the mud in his village square is something finer than the mud on Whorehouse Row.

“Money, no. But something in trade,” the Traveler said, his face twisting as he forced a smile.

“What have you got?”

The Traveler held up a rock.

“You want a ride for a rock?”

“What if it was blessed?”

“Blessed? You mean a lucky rock. My boss has a lucky pig’s foot that he carries with him on every job.” As he spoke, Yarush eyed the traveling bag.